Thursday is the day my mum comes over and I go to work at the bf support group for two hours in the middle of the day.  Dad came too this week because it’s school holidays (he works in a school) so he took me and picked me up.  Mum had brought the stuff to make the strawberry cheesecake from Big Cook Little Cook, as requested by the girls, so they made that as soon as I got home.  I also had a shift on the bf helpline after work so I didn’t see much of what was going on during the day with the children - probably lots of playing and fun, I should imagine!  Dad told me that the girls refused to stop picking up the chickens, which is very annoying as they were doing the same on Wednesday.  I’ve now had to tell the children that the chickens need some free-ranging time and they can each pick up each chicken once, and then only if I ask them to, e.g. to help me put them away, and that if they keep doing it, it’s not fair on the chickens and the children will have to stay inside while the chickens free-range.  Worked with Flopsy yesterday (Friday) but not Mopsy so she had to come in .  Hopefully she’ll understand soon and give a bit more respect to the chickens’ rights to forage un-molested!

Friday we went to a friend’s house and hung around there until mid-afternoon.  She’s in the early stages of pregnancy, and I’m in the late stages, so we’re both exhausted and spent the time lying on the sofas hoping the children entertaining themselves isn’t causing too much mayhem wherever they are!  We’d collected one egg in the morning, and came home to two more, so all three chickens are officially laying now

We had expected a very boring day yesterday, having no car, but it turned out to be very full and fun.  Our crocs arrived very early and Flopsy put hers on straight away and has only taken them off for bed since!  Mopsy’s not keen on hers - I think she can’t get over how loose they feel and refuses to keep wearing them to get used to them.  Fingers crossed she does soon!  Cotton-tail’s are too big, but we’d expected that.  I can’t decide if mine are too big or not.  They’re certainly bigger than the website says they should be, but I seem to keep meeting people who wear theirs as big as mine are and find them fine.  And I’m fairly certain that the next size down were too small when I tried them on.  They’re very comfy though, and despite a lot of walking yesterday, came home with no pelvic ache at all, which just about never happens nowadays, so they’re clearly not too, too big.  I might go and try on a smaller size anyway, which will either reassure me, or I’ll buy a smaller size and someone suggested keeping the larger size to wear in the winter with socks - or I could sell them on ebay.  I wore them for too long yesterday to really send back, unfortunately.

A friend and her 22m old came over late morning to see the chickens and have lunch with us, and then another friend texted me to invite us to join her and another family at some free children’s street theatre that was going on in town in the afternoon.  We knew we’d have to the get the bus, so I was a bit reluctant knowing how tired my back gets, and not knowing if I ought to wear my crocs or not, but my friend persuaded me to try them out for the day and sell them on ebay if they didn’t work out.  I took my merrells with me anyway, just in case. 

So we got the bus into town and met up with the other families to watch the most fantastic street theatre.  It was 50 minutes long and the children managed to stick the whole thing out and really enjoyed it all.  It was like a silent comedy movie, with someone playing an accordian and making sound effects and three other actors playing 8 characters who were involved in some way or other in the theft or recovery of a stolen Mona Lisa at a station.  It was very funny and very slapstick with lots of people falling over and being put in dustbins and hanging from great heights when ladders get taken away etc.

Then we all went to get the children snacks and a drink, which took us to 4pm.  Two of the children begged us to take them to the ‘dinosaur museum’ - a lovely, free city museum that has a very small dinosaur section that our children all love - so we went there until it closed at 4.45pm, got the bus home and then played with the chickens until DH got back. 

Mopsy has suddenly worked out how to pick the chickens up - something I worried about at first, but the chickens don’t seem to mind at all, so I stopped asking her not to.  Flopsy’s not quite so brave and will only pick one of them up.  Cotton-tail keeps trying, but is not at all gentle so we have to keep rescuing the poor chickens from her.  I’ve just noticed they’re short of food, so will go and top them up.

We haven’t done much at all today.  I had a shift to work on the helpline from 9-10am and somehow, while I was upstairs hiding from the children in order to answer phone calls, DH managed to get all three dressed, breakfasted and suncreamed and I didn’t hear any shouting!  I wasn’t dressed or breakfasted, though, but once I was, we all went on a croc trying on trip.  We have succumbed to the croc fashion but only after a year of refusing to simply because everyone else was - I’m very daft sometimes!  Anyway, after a week on the beach with children whining about sand in their doodles, I have decided that crocs would be a very good investment for them - a bit more expensive than doodles, but easier to get them to put on, and they can wear them in the winter with socks, and they can be handed down.  Plus, getting some for myself means that I no longer have to struggle bending down to do up my Merrells straps (walking sandals which are the only things that doesn’t make my pelvis ache front and back after walking only a few yards!) - this is a particular problem now that the lovely Cotton-tail likes to undo *all* the straps whenever she gets the chance.  So we went to Brantanos, tried on a load of crocs, and then came home and ordered them in the desired colours.  They were on a multi-buy promotion so Cotton-tail has some to grow into (she’s a bit too small for their smallest size).  I’ve since found out that, not only will they not make my pelvic pain worse, but that many other pregnant women with pelvic pain have found that wearing crocs actually make it better!!!  So I’m very much hoping they arrive in the morning and I can look forward to a much more comfortable last few weeks of pregnancy.  The children are very excited indeed.

When we got home, we had lunch and let the chickens out to free-range for the afternoon and then just dossed about rather a lot!  Flopsy and Mopsy made themselves a bunkbed with their little wooden table and lots of teatowels from the kitchen.  DH played lots of tickling and rough and tumble games with all three of them.  Flopsy’s very tired at the moment, thanks to her sleeping problems, so she keeps getting upset and storming upstairs.  I went up to her one time when she was cross that it was Mopsy’s turn to choose the video they watched, and we lay on the bed together and felt and watched the baby move.  She loved it and I went to get my favourite pregnancy book for us to look through to find out what the baby could do now.  The pictures prompted a very long discussion (not the first!) which included female anatomy, in particular that of a pregnant woman; labour and birth; how to take a baby swimming; how babies get sandy when they go on the beach.  Eventually she got bored and I suggested we go downstairs together, which she agreed to, but then by the time I got downstairs she’d run back upstairs again.

She eventually decided to come down if DH would play a grown-up game with her that was too old for Mopsy to play - she chose Monopoly and, true to form, Mopsy suddenly turned the tv off and announced she wanted to play.  Cue lots of crying when Flopsy put her foot down.  These moments are the frustrating ones when you have lots of children and believe in finding a solution that suits everyone.  I managed to distract Mopsy for a little bit by asking her to help me get the chickens in - she threw them a load of mealworms into the run, and then amazed me by being able to pick one of them up that was only half-way in the doorway!  We shut them in and put their shower curtain over them as it looked like rain, and then Mopsy ran in and asked again if she could play Monopoly.  As Cotton-tail was being fairly easy and not disrupting the game too much, I suggested that Mopsy and I take a different grown up game upstairs to play on our own and she jumped at the chance.  She actually decided to do her marble run and we went upstairs and played with that for absolutely ages.  Then she chatted to me for a while about her Grandma’s marble game (solitaire) and about how Grandma had said (apparently) that she’d be very happy if one of her marbles ever got broken…think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding there, but hey ho!  When we got downstairs, Monopoly was being put away and DH told us that Flopsy had built a green house somewhere this time (I have no idea how they play it so she can join in, but he somehow manages it and she loves it!). 

I noticed two little notes on the fridge that were folded over.  One said ‘Daisy’ on the front and the other said ‘Tom’, and I realised that this is what Flopsy had spent a lot of the morning working on and was what she started last night.  Daisy is a new friend of Flopsy and Mopsy’s and is 14 (I think!).  Tom is my brother.  His note said ‘To Tom max and Bob the builder and scrabble and red dog blue dog are here lots of love Flopsy’ - she asked us how to write ‘and’ but copied the rest of the words from their piles of board games around the room.  Then she asked me for ‘are’ ‘here’ and ‘love’ but knew the rest.  DH told me he’d been asked for a lot of the words for Daisy’s note which read ‘to daisy.  all the chickens are laying eggs. lots of love flopsy’.  So sweet!  Must remember to help her post them tomorrow!

The last event of the day was poor Cotton-tail.  I could hear DH in the kitchen cooking our supper, talking on the phone to his manager and randomly saying ’stay awake, Cotton-tail’ while I was pinned to the sofa by the other two.  Then I heard him finish his phone call and put Cotton-tail on the kitchen counter to watch him cook.  Then I heard a crash, and a swear-word and lots of crying - poor little thing had fallen asleep sitting on the kitchen counter and fallen off and DH only just missed catching her!  She was absolutely fine, though, with a cuddle and some arnica, thank goodness. 

Then we all had supper and DH is currently reading to them and (hopefully) getting them all to sleep, having bathed them all amidst lots of ‘would you *please* stop throwing water over the side of the bath!?’ and other commonly heard phrases during a bathtime that includes several children!

Since I was last blogging, Flopsy has become a pretty fluent reader.  We used the highly recommended 5 step reading scheme that many other HEors recommended to us.  It goes like this:

1. Read to them

2. Read to them

3. Read to them

4. Read to them

5. Read to them

I’m aware she’s done it quite young for a child whose parents follow an autonomous learning route, but the very fact that it’s happened is what’s amazed and delighted us.  I’ve read lots about how children learn to read autonomously, and it’s so wonderful to see it unfolding before our eyes.  We’d heard that a child who decides to learn to read (at whatever age) will do so easily within the space of a few weeks and that’s exactly what’s happened.  I thought it might be interesting (or even helpful to other HEors) to blog the process as it unfolded for Flopsy. 

I think the reason she did it so young, btw, is because she has always, from very early on, been very ‘left-brained’ - analytical, perfectionist etc.  No matter what ‘they’ say about encouraging creativity to even the sides of the brain out, Flopsy is simply a left-brained person.  She’s always loved numbers and letters.  I hate labelling, but this has been such an obvious part of her personality that one can’t ignore its part in her learning to read.  She learnt the names of all the letters of the alphabet at a very young age.  We had a first words book that had the alphabet in capitals on the first page and we had to read it to her over and over again.  I thought this book was fab as I was reading One-to-One, which is inspired by Steiner education.  It says that if children want to learn letters, it’s best to teach capitals first.  However, Flopsy worked out pretty quickly from other books and games/jigsaws which lower-case letters corresponded to which upper-case ones and kind of took that side of it out of our hands!  I think she was only two by the time she knew the alphabet by heart.  I have an instinctive aversion to phonics being the first stage of reading, so we only ever told her the names of the letters, not the sounds they make - that came a lot later when she was asking for help with working out words.

Alongside the learning of the alphabet, she was also building on her love of books.  There’s a fab book called Read With Me: An Apprenticeship Approach to Reading, which my mum recommended to me and which I would thoroughly recommend to any other HEor if you can get hold of a copy - it’s sadly out of print now.  It really spoke to my heart as she says that reading should primarily be about enjoying books, not about decoding words and that the decoding will just come naturally if children spend their early years just being allowed to enjoy books.  I know many children whose enjoyment of books has been sadly hampered by being forced to learn how to decode words too young so I was determined that this wouldn’t happen to my children.  Flopsy, from a very young age, as well as being read to by us from birth, began to look at books on her own and then started to tell us the story in them.  She didn’t do this very much, though, as she likes to know she’s doing things just right, so preferred to only read us books that she knew by heart - we have some brilliant books for this, e.g. Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Red Hat, Blue Hat.  Mopsy will read us any book she can get her hands on, but she doesn’t mind if her words don’t match what she remembers us saying.  Flopsy’s love of books meant she would spend a huge amount of time with a pile beside her just looking through them one by one.  To me, that is reading.  I don’t know how many times I’ve traipsed upstairs wondering why she and Mopsy have been so quiet and concerned about what they’re up to, simply to find them both cuddled up in bed with piles of books around them.

The next stage was recognising words that are important to her, like her name.  I think she was coming up to three when she could consistently recognise her name.  It was at this time that I started to understand what people meant when they talked about children learning to read the ‘whole words’ way.  Mopsy’s real name is Alys, and one day, when we’d been writing on the chalk board together and some of the bits had been rubbed off, Flopsy saw the word ’says’ and told me that it said ‘Alys’.  She’d looked at the shape of the word, and made up her mind what it said based on that.  She’s continued her learning to read in this way.

As she slowly started to recognise more and more words, she began to gain a knowledge of what sounds the letters made.  She’s always enjoyed work books and those children’s magazines, and of course the tv and the cbeebies website, so she’s learnt a lot of letter sounds from those.  When she’s asked us what a word says, we’ve attempted to help her sound it out, but it’s never really helped her much - she just wasn’t seeing words in that way.  Gradually she learnt to recognise more and more words and we were fairly impressed at the number she knew.  But she wasn’t, and this turned out to be the key. 

By the time she was nearly five she knew so many words, but kept telling us that she couldn’t read.  I don’t know what the definition of ‘being able to read’ is, but we kept saying that she could read loads of words and was doing really well.  However, she didn’t really believe us and I think the problem was that she was comparing her reading to ours.  Her confidence was low because the only people whose reading ability she could compare hers to were adults.  I offered for her to do a reading age test with me, confident that she’d know enough words to come up with a high reading age and hopeful that it would prove to her that she was reading well for her age.  She said she wanted to and it came up as 6.75 - about 2 years ahead of her actual age.  When I told her, the affect was incredible.  She suddenly really got into reading to us.  Before this, she wouldn’t attempt to read things in front of us, and we suspected she knew far more than we realised. 

After doing the reading age test, DH bought her six of the level 1 books from the Ladybird Read It Yourself series.  They’re lovely books because they’re not based on phonics.  She’s looked at a few friends reading scheme books and not been very taken with them, but these ladybird books she loved.  They’re real stories - fairy tales - that are written very, very simply at level 1, and also very repetetively.  She took a while to get the confidence to try reading them to us and we read them to her a lot at first, but then she started to have a go herself and really took to them.  Because of reading the ‘whole words’ way, her reading voice really flowed and the story was more important than the words.  In other words, she didn’t have to spend time working out how to decode each sentence word by word.  She was very meticulous and didn’t move onto the next sentence until she’d decided that she’d got every word right.  We were careful never to correct her, and if she asked us what a word said, we told her outright after a short pause to give her a bit more chance to work it out herself.  We had to really resist teaching her how to sound these words out as it just annoyed her and made her stop reading!

After a few weeks, she decided she was good enough at the level 1 books for us to get her some level 2 books.  These took  her less time to get confident with and I think that within the space of  week she had moved onto level 3 and fairly immediately, level 4.  Alongside all this, we’ve frequently found her reading to her sisters and she often comes up to us with something and asked us if it says what she thinks it says.  It really has only taken a few weeks for her to become fluent and she’s clearly working out a lot of words for herself, simply based on her knowledge of the words she knows well already, and based on the context they’re in.  Her reading obsession has waned a little now she’s got there, but I’m not at all surprised after such an intense period of learning that she’s having a break for a while.  I’m intrigued to find out when she feels confident enough to be reading longer books to herself, but at the moment she’s very happy just reading any picture books that come to hand, and any signs or adult book titles or anything that she happens to see around.  It’s been such a delight to be a part of and I feel grateful every single day that she has learnt at home, rather than at school, so that I can share her joy with her and not worry about her being put off books by too much pushing.

Or just another one-off, I wonder!  Hopefully a return to blogging.  I like looking back over what we’ve done and enjoyed having a chance to get on my soapbox from time to time.  Tonight, I’m sitting up with Flopsy who can’t sleep, and so I’m just surfing the next waiting for her to drop off again.  I was thinking of blogging about what we’ve been doing today, and haven’t done that since when I very first started blogging when Mopsy was born!

The night before last, Flopsy couldn’t get to sleep until midnight, the night before that it was 10.30.  Considering DH and I are usually in bed by 10pm at the moment, this was making us quite tired and angry etc. but DH had Saturday and Sunday off work so I wasn’t too fussed the first night.  However, I was not looking forward to looking after all three girls on the hottest day so far, on my own, heavily pregnant, and lacking in sleep.  Before I went to sleep, I told DH to take the car to work so he didn’t get so tired cycling (he can leave a little later if he drives) and said I’d just spend the day letting the girls watch tv and lolling on the sofa with the fan on trying not to lose my temper whenever they started bickering.  However, when DH woke, Flopsy was already awake (she wakes early, goes to sleep late and I don’t know how she’s surviving at the moment!) and I couldn’t get back to sleep, and my pelvis was aching (obviously slept awkwardly) so I got up and apologised but said could I please keep the car so that I could take them out.  I figured that even if I just took them out for an hour in the morning when it wasn’t too hot, it would help all our fraying tempers!  Being the lovely DH that he was, he agreed immediately and sped up his morning preparations so he had time to cycle.

After he left (at about 6.50am), Flopsy sat on the sofa watching tv, as she likes to do in the mornings, and I faffed around on the computer.  Then we heard little Cotton-tail bumping herself down the stairs, as she likes to do.  She comes and sits right close to Flopsy (she adores her big sisters) and cuddles up to her to watch whatever she’s watching.  Soon after 8am, Mopsy came down to join us too and by this time I was watching the delights of early morning children’s tv too so Mopsy cuddled on my knee in her lovely cosy, dozy state she is in when she first wakes up.  I asked them if they’d like to go to the NCT toddler group we helped set up and still go to occassionally (we don’t go too often because the Children’s Centre it’s based in keep going on at us to get everyone, including ourselves, to ‘register’ with them and fill in this extensive form which is not, IMO, appropriate and I refuse to do it.  Luckily my friends who still run the group also think it’s too intrusive and are negotiating with them to change it - that’s a whole ‘nother post though!).  A couple of their young friends go there so they do like going sometimes, although Flopsy finds it too boring to go every week being so much older than everyone else, but they decided they did want to go this morning.  We have to leave soon after 9am to get there on time, but I decided to take things slowly as I was in such discomfort.

We set about breakfasting and discussing how we would tell which of our chickens laid which egg (oh yes, we now have chickens…will post about them at some point if I keep this up!) - Flopsy has decided the way to tell is to ask them, because apparently she can understand ‘bok, bok, bok’   For some reason unknown to mankind, all three children co-operated with suncreaming, which, along with teethbrusing, is just about the only thing we insist on happening, so I didn’t get stressed out then - had to do it sitting on the birth ball though, as it was too uncomfortable to sit on the sofa or floor.  Then they all *gasp* got dressed without too much cajoling - not sure what was in their cereal…some sort of ‘let’s be nice to Mummy medicine’ or something.  Usually this is where I’m getting flustered when I’m tired and achy and asking them tetchily why on earth I’m putting all the work in getting them ready for something *they* want to go to!  Then, even more of a shock, Mopsy let me brush her hair!!!!!  This is a very rare occurrance in our house - she usually looks like she has a very blond birds’ nest on her head, with a few curly rats tails coming out the bottom, but this morning she looked very neat and tidy with a plait in it!!!  Flopsy also asked for a pony tail so she looked fairly presentable too!  Considering this toddler group is full of mainstream parents, I do palpably feel the ‘looks’ I occassionally get when my three are ‘allowed’ to just be children, but I console myself with the knowledge that my friends running it are totally accepting of our family’s lifestyle and the rather smug feeling of ‘I have more experience (more, and older, children than anyone else there) and more knowledge (willing to think outside the box!) than the rest of you so pah!’

We all piled into the car (Mopsy can now strap herself in, but Flopsy can’t ) and I put the buggy in and an extra-full nappy bag just in case we made any impromptu decisions about what to do after the group.  Then we were off and got there about 40 minutes late and had a lovely time.  Mopsy and Flopsy did some lovely paintings (which we leave to dry and one of my friends collects for me next time she goes), and Cotton-tail clung to me for ages, which is unlike her in general, but something she’s started doing lately…maybe picking up on the ‘new baby coming’ vibes…?  There are lots of silly rules at this Children’s Centre, so I have spent some sessions telling the children they can’t do this or can’t do that - luckily they seem to understand that, although the rules don’t make sense to them (or to me, for that matter), we have to follow them if we want to come to the group, so they’re pretty good when I ask them to stop doing forbidden things now. 

We had planned to go to a children’s yoga session we tried out two weeks ago before our holiday, and which none of them joined in with but which Mopsy was very upset when it was time to leave saying ‘but I wanted to do yoga!!’.  So it was very easy getting them to leave this time (usually it’s a nightmare!) and we drove off to the next town and got there in time not to have to rush, except I didn’t have money for the car park so had to just keep my fingers crossed that there wouldn’t be a parking attendant round in the next 45 minutes!  The session was really lovely - we only have to pay for Flopsy and Mopsy.  Flopsy decided she was still not ready to join in, but Mopsy joined in for the whole session with me, and Cotton-tail was so sweet copying as much as she could.  Mopsy absolutely loved it, actually, so I’m looking forward to going every week now.

After yoga, we’d arranged with a newly pregnant friend who runs the toddler group and has two children who are very friendly with mine, to go round to her house for lunch and to survive the afternoon.  When we got there, the children all asked for McDonalds so we decided that it might not be a bad idea to go there and eat in the restaurant - an hour of coolness!  When we got back, my friend’s DH had returned early from work, and set up their new big paddling pool.  He was so kind getting myself and my friend chairs so we could sit with our feet in the pool, and a parasol to shade us.  We consequently had a blissful afternoon with the children all playing and splashing to keep us cool, and entertaining eachother so we didn’t have too much to do.  Then the thunder started and we all came in and had crumpets.  Poor Flopsy then complained of a tummy-ache so we left and got home only an hour before DH was due to arrive back.  Poor thing came back drenched from the torrential rain.

All in all, considering I’d been dreading the day, it turned out really, really lovely.  Flopsy’s just fallen asleep next to me on the sofa now, so I’ll click on ‘publish’ and go and wake DH to carry her upstairs to bed.  Fingers crossed she doesn’t wake when he puts her down, or I’ll be back writing something else!

A fantastic breastfeeding campaign aimed at the social group least likely to breastfeed has been launched which focusses on breastfeeding being glamourous.  Have a look at the Be A Star website and this wonderful Guardian article written by a very experienced NCT Breastfeeding Counsellor.  Absolutely lovely

I haven’t blogged on here for ages.  Reason being I feel ill.  Reason I feel ill is that I’m expecting another baby!    I’m starting to feel a little better now so maybe blogging will become more frequent soon - hopefully…

 Oh, and Mopsy turned 3 and I turned 28.  Not quite such exciting news though LOL!

My wonderful, lovely cousin is coming home early.  She’s been in Kenya for the last four months volunteering in an orphanage in Nakuru.  She went to the beach for Christmas and before she got back everything blew up (literally in some cases).  She can’t get back from the beach anyway as there’s no transport but it would be too dangerous for her to try.  She was meant to come back at the beginning of next month but her parents have arranged for her to get to an airport and fly out sooner - should be back next week hopefully :-)  Can’t wait to see her - we love her very much and have been very worried about her.

Because I think that comment conversations get lost among posts, I’m going to respond to comments here

1. Yes, a raised bed might be the only option, but I understand that the thing about comfrey is that the roots go really deep and tap into the nutrients that can only be found in the subsoil and then these nutrients are then returned to your veg beds when you used the leaves as a mulch/compost.  Soooo….I’ve discovered that the large rock thing I’ve found is actually a lump of concrete and it’s surrounded by lots of smaller pieces and ‘grains’ of cement.  I don’t know how deep the cement goes, but it’s easy to clear and the concrete lump appears to break up when it’s banged very hard with a spade.  I’m going to borrow my Dad’s sledgehammer to make breaking it up easier (and safe-guard  my spade that is in danger of being broken!)  and hopefully then the comfrey roots will be able to reach past the crap to the good stuff deeper down (if there is any!).  I think I’m going to start a campaign for builders on new-builds to not make a horrid rubble heap of the garden!

2. Green manure is plants that you sow solely to nourish the soil - legumes that fix nitrogen for example, or plants that you cut down and dig in when they’re very leafy.  They’re meant to keep the ground covered between crops which is better for the soil, and some improve the structure because of the way their roots grow.